


Reminiscience

by Squornshellous_Beta



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 00:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3998773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squornshellous_Beta/pseuds/Squornshellous_Beta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A thousand years passed between Amethyst's creation and her joining the Crystal Gems. Just what was she doing in that time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reminiscience

Steven climbed up the steps to his house, humming cheerfully. It was impossible not to be cheerful when you had donuts, he felt. Of course, he was cheerful most of the time, donuts or otherwise; it was part of why he got along so well with most people, and the Gems had on occasion named it among his best features. Actually, he wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that; from what he’d heard of his mother she had been the same way. If they liked that he was similar to her, did that mean they were looking for signs that she was still alive, that he hadn’t replaced her entirely? They had said that wasn’t so, but he wasn’t sure if they weren’t just lying to spare his feelings. He understood why they would want her around, though. He wanted her around too, and he’d never even known her; she’d been their friend for thousands of years, more time than he could readily comprehend.

His train of thought derailed as, halfway up the steps, he heard the sound of raised voices within the house. From the sound of it, Pearl and Amethyst were arguing again. As well as they got along when they were both happy, their diametrically opposed personalities meant they could and did begin to fight over even the smallest issue. Garnet was usually able to calm them down, and it hadn’t escaped his notice that they tried to avoid it while he was around to hear, but Garnet was deep beneath the ocean and he had been out - and from the cadence of Pearl’s voice they had really gotten into it this time.

Scarcely realizing he was doing it he bounded up the remainder of the steps, reaching the house in three quick motions; he had been tapping into more of his Gem strength of late, ever since the mess with the Home World ship. The door rebounded loudly as he hurled himself through it and interposed himself between Pearl and Amethyst, who barely even noticed he had arrived; this was a _bad_ one, it seemed. “Pearl! Amethyst!” he called out, but they simply continued to shout over him.

“Oh, _now_ look what you’ve done!” Pearl’s voice was practically dripping with condescension. “You’ve upset Steven, as though you hadn’t already made enough of a mess of this. I hope you’re happy!”

“ _I’ve_ upset Steven?” Amethyst retorted, incredulous. “This is _your_ fault, Miss Stuck-Up Princess, I had nothing to do with it!”

“If you took better care of your room this would never have happened and you _know_ it! Why, of all people to be stranded on this planet with, I got stuck with such a _slob_ , I’ll never know!”

“You think being stuck with _you_ is any more fun? I had a better life when I was a _dog!_ ” That was new information to Steven. He knew she was more casual with her shapeshifting than the other Gems, but had she spent time living in another form?

No matter. That was something to think about when the argument had been stopped. “Guys, please stop fighting? I’m sure whatever happened can be talked out-”

Pearl spoke over him. “Always so obstinate, it _suited_ you - why not go back to it, if it was so much fun?”

Even as annoyed as she already seemed, rage visibly flashed across Amethyst’s face at those words. She choked on her words for a moment, but then seemed to settle on a comeback: “Well at least I’m _meant_ to be ‘obstinate’ - better that than some _mass-produced servant drone_ who can only even _have her own thoughts_ because she was _broken!_ ”

Almost the instant she said them Amethyst seemed to regret her words, the anger draining from her; she pulled back, her posture becoming almost _submissive_. Pearl’s reaction, though, was almost exactly the opposite; she froze momentarily, then her face contorted into an expression Steven could only describe as _hatred_. Somehow, without significantly altering her stance, she seemed to radiate an air of such danger that Steven reflexively summoned a shield bubble, momentarily convinced that she would attempt to _kill_ Amethyst.

A tense, silent moment passed, nobody making a move, but then Pearl’s fury disintegrated, replaced by visible horror. Tears gathered in her eyes, and she turned and fled into the Temple, a choked sob audible in the last moments before the door sealed.

Silence reigned briefly, until after several minutes Steven thought to dissolve his shield. Amethyst silently moved to the couch and sat down, taking several deep breaths before also breaking down and crying. His cheerful attitude unable to help here, Steven could do no more than sit next to her, providing a comforting presence until she calmed down.

Eventually she did stop crying, carelessly wiping away her tears, and remained silent for a while longer. Steven didn’t interrupt her thinking, and eventually she spoke up, voice thick with emotion. “You know, I don’t even remember what that was _about?_ It’s stupid, I was so sure I was right and she was just getting on my case, and then I went and messed it up like that. That was out of line. I’m not good with all this… _feelings_ stuff, but I know that much; she’s never used the Kindergarten against me, and even that would have been better than what I said.”

“She’ll be fine, Amethyst,” Steven attempted to console her. “Just give her time to calm down, and then you can apologize and go back to being friends again.”

“I don’t know, Steven. You don’t get just how bad it was, and I don’t think I to explain it to you even if it was my story to tell.”

Steven didn’t reply. What was there to say? After a short while the silence began to grow awkward, though, so he decided to ask one of the other questions the argument had raised. “So… you were a dog?”

Amethyst stiffened and nodded. “Yeah, that was one of the things Pearl said I shouldn’t tell you until you were older. I guess that’s kind of a lost cause, huh? Just another reason for her to be mad at me.” She gathered her thoughts for a moment. “You remember the Kindergarten?”

Steven nodded.

“I told you I was made there, with thousands of other Amethysts. What I didn’t say was just what we were made _for_. When I first became conscious there was only one thought in my mind: the identity of a commanding officer and the fact that I had to obey her. We were _weapons_ , not enough mind to be anything else. I learned later on that doing it that way damages the stability of a Gem, we need a mind to be able to properly hold a form - that’s why Gems whose minds start to go when they crack turn into monsters.

“Back then, though, I didn’t know any of that. When I pulled myself out of my hole for the first time one of my sisters was already nearby, and she was starting to lose it; she was a lot bigger than she should have been. Sharper, too. We fought. Nothing else we could do, nothing we knew how to. Can’t talk out your differences when you don’t have a _language_. I was outmatched. Shows why they don’t mind the instability, I guess; if your weapons turn into bigger, stronger weapons and you can still point them at who you want hurt, that’s actually _better_ for them, right?”

“You and your sisters were _designed_ to be things like the monsters we fight?” Steven asked, hoping that he might somehow have misunderstood what she was saying. “That’s… that’s _horrible_. How could anyone do that?”

“The Empire was at war. Rose always said the Empire didn’t know how to do anything _but_ war, that they were always looking for the next threat when things started to look peaceful. We were the disposable shock troops, we could be thrown at an enemy and it didn’t matter if we died - not like a more valuable specialist Gem like a Jade, or a Moonstone, or especially a Diamond.

“All I knew was I was hurt and needed time to recover. I managed to escape my sister for long enough to get away, and I hid from her. Eventually she lost interest and I could retreat to my hole. It felt safe, somewhere I could stay and rest. When I was partway healed I went out a few times, played with some sisters who were saner than the first one, but at the same time I tended to make my injuries worse.

“So when the Amethysts were called to action and gathered up onto a ship, I was too hurt to go with them. The commanders didn’t waste time chasing down a few stragglers, and they wouldn’t have known to look for me anyway, since losing a dozen or two to infighting was expected. It didn’t matter to them, because we were mass-produced; there were more than enough to account for the losses.

“I knew that I’d missed the call to action and I didn’t have any thoughts outside of that, so I just sat in my hole. Over the next century or two I started to grow a mind, though I didn’t realize it then; I never understood the explanation for why that happened later on, but it did. That’s what Jasper meant when she called me an ‘overcooked runt’.”

Steven was silent, and tried to remain still. He could tell this wasn’t something she usually talked about - perhaps had only even thought about it once before, when she first put the story together with her friends’ help - and it seemed like any interruption might spook her and she would repress it again.

“Eventually I was smart enough to want to see something other than the inside of my hole, so I left. I just sort of wandered aimlessly for a few years, changing into animals I saw that could move around easier. At some point I stumbled into a human settlement and I saw that there was a kind of animal that was being taken care of, living in the warm and dry and being fed. So I turned into a dog. Found a family that would take me in that already had one - that was important, because I had to learn what dogs did, to be convincing. They probably found it weird that I followed their dog around in its every action at first, come to think of it.

“After a few years their dog died and they realized I looked exactly the same as I always had. Long story short, I couldn’t live there any more, so I moved on. Found another group of humans and lived with them for a while, and eventually left and repeated the whole process. I learned how to be other animals, too, cats and birds and horses; at one point when I couldn’t find any humans I led a wolf pack for a few decades, that was fun.

“I spent about eight hundred years living like that. Then one day I woke up to something I hadn’t felt since the Kindergarten: there was structured magic nearby. Gems. Rose’s group, specifically. I tried to run, but they caught me easily. Understandably, they thought I was dangerous, and I nearly died in the fight, but at some point Rose realized I had more than just the instincts I was made with, and asked if I could talk.

“The most complicated sentence I could make at the time was something on about the level of ‘not want fight, don’t hurt me’, but it was enough. Instead of sealing me in a bubble like some of my sisters, they took me in. Not everyone was happy about that, especially since I had to be taught just about everything that most Gems came programmed with, but she was the boss, so what she said went. So I went with them and, well, the rest is history.”

“You know,” said Steven hesitantly, seeing that her story was complete, “that’s kind of something we have in common. Not having the programmed knowledge, I mean. When I was born I didn’t know anything, just like human babies.”

“Huh,” Amethyst replied, considering it. “Yeah, you didn’t, did you? Hey, we can be Idiot Buddies together, I guess.”

“You’re not an idiot, Amethyst,” said Pearl softly. Amethyst and Steven both jumped, not having noticed her enter the room, and Amethyst flushed, presumably wondering just how much of her introspection had been overheard. “Or if you are, then so am I. I’m sorry for what I said. I don’t really want you to leave, I wasn’t thinking.”

Still blushing deeply, Amethyst didn’t seem to be able to look directly at Pearl. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said - I mean - I should have been better than to use that against you.”

“Can we agree we’re both sorry and try not to do it again in future?” suggested Pearl.

“Yeah,” Amethyst agreed, “that works. And… I’ll try and keep my stuff in my room from now on.”

Pearl, seeming genuinely surprised, simply nodded.

A moment passed in silence, and then the atmosphere was broken by a thought from Steven. “Wait, so is that why you’re more comfortable eating and sleeping than Pearl or Garnet, because you got used to it before you met them?”

“Now that you mention it, prob’ly,” she replied, and laughed. “I never thought of it like that before.”

For all that she wanted to encourage introspection this was outside of Pearl’s comfort zone. “You know,” she said, “Garnet should be back soon, possibly with something interesting from the ocean depths. Perhaps we should go down to the beach to greet her when she returns?”

“Good idea, Pearl!” replied Steven, excited. “Race you, Amethyst!”

Even as he said the words he was already halfway through jumping out of his seat, and the two of them ran down to the beach together. Pearl, smiling at their antics, followed more sedately behind.


End file.
